Re: PolicyKit 0.9 is going away

From: Kevin Kofler <kevin kofler chello at>

To: fedora-devel-list redhat com

Subject: Re: PolicyKit 0.9 is going away

Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:43:46 +0200

Matthias Clasen wrote:
> Anyway, this all seems to be a somewhat moot discussion, trying to nail
> us down on a 'promise to keep the old stuff around', when there already
> is a patch that can solve the whole dilemma.
Looks like this is actually moot. I checked for how much of KDE really uses
PolicyKit as of KDE 4.3. It turns out that the only user is PolicyKit-KDE
itself. And it's kinda moot to keep the old framework around just to have an
authentication agent no program will ever call into or an authorization
editor for a database no other program will ever look into. ;-)
So I'm retracting both my offer to maintain a compat package for PolicyKit
0.9 and my request to not retire it, it looks like we really don't need it
anymore. (Well, it's pretty bad that we get PK1 forced on us before the KDE
auth agent is ready, but that's not something a compat package could fix,
only reverting the whole thing could.) Hopefully, by KDE 4.4, when more KDE
stuff will actually use PolicyKit, we'll have a solution for PolicyKit 1
support. I also hope we'll be able to provide a KDE auth agent soon (but for
now please see our request to enable the GNOME one in KDE – we need SOME
auth agent running in KDE ASAP to make KPackageKit work properly).
Kevin Kofler